“For WWF, partnering with Indigenous Peoples is an essential part of our conservation work.” This sentence comes from WWF’s latest newsletter from its international forest and climate team. The article is written by Jolly Sassa Kiuka and Flory Botamba who work for WWF in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Two weeks ago, REDD-Monitor wrote a post about a partnership between WWF and Rougier, a French logging company, in Cameroon. The partnership is part of WWF’s controversial Global Forest and Trade Network.

The Ngoyla-Mintom REDD project covers an area of more than 700,000 hectares in the south of Cameroon. The project takes a “landscape” approach, aiming to create a new protected area linking the Nki National Park and Dja Biosphere Reserve.

In April 2015, WWF and Rougier, a French logging company, announced that they would work together on a three year programme to “jointly advance responsible forest management and trade”. The deal is part of WWF’s Global Forest and Trade Network (GFTN) that aims to promote trade in legal and sustainable timber.

“Conservation efforts in the Congo Basin are mostly failing to protect forests and biodiversity, having serious negative impacts on local populations, and for these reasons are probably unsustainable.”

Last night at 21:00 a new version of the Draft Paris Outcome was released at COP21 in Paris. It’s down to 27 pages and has only 50 pairs of square brackets. That’s the good news. The rest is practically all bad news.

Grains, meat, sugar, palm oil, pulp and paper, coal, aluminium, copper, gold, oil. Just some of the commodities that corporations take from the lands of indigenous peoples to ship around the world in order to generate profits.

LifeMosaic has produced an excellent new series of 10 videos, sharing “stories of resistance, resilience and hope with communities on the frontline of the global rush for land”. The video series is titled, “Territories of Life: A video toolkit for indigenous peoples about land and rights”.

Next week sees the 13th meeting of the World Bank’s Carbon Fund, under its Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. Cameroon is one the countries that will be presenting its Emission Reductions Program Idea Note (ER-PIN).

Progress on addressing illegal logging in Cameroon has stalled since 2010. That’s one of the findings of a new report from the British think tank Chatham House. The report is one of the series of reports on illegal logging that Chatham House has produced in recent years.

“Checking deforestation requires respect for our basic rights, which are the rights of all peoples and all human beings. Deforestation is unleashed when our rights are not protected and our lands and forests are taken over by industrial interests without our consent.”

The Accra Caucus recently release a report that looks at the development of safeguards in Guyana, Indonesia, Nepal, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The report finds that “there are continuing concerns about the current direction of REDD+, especially in some countries”.

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REDDisms:

“Valuing a forest only for its carbon is like valuing a computer chip only for its silicon. The benefits for biodiversity and local livelihoods must not be viewed as add-ons, but as central to a successful REDD scheme.”